Penny Goid: For three people thrown together by chance,?it’s??interesting that we all have spent part of ?our lives at the University of Chicago-me as an undergraduatestudent, John Komlos as a graduate student, and John Goldsmith as a professor. And ?the three of us are close in age and in the types of disciplines chosen-I am also a historian, with additional graduate training in literature and art history. A large difference among us, however, is that my teaching career has been primarily at a small liberal arts college (Knox College), an institution that puts its strongest emphasis on teaching, even while research is encouraged and expected. I’m also ?female and began my career during a period of time in which wcmen were just beginning te enter academia in significant numbers; this has been a formative influence on my life in the academy and in my attitudes toward it.

I entered graduate school without a clear commitment to professional training. In the fall term of my senior year, l was suddenly caught up in my studies by a serendipitous concatenation of courses in medieval studies and cultural history, and I just wanted to keep learning. It happened that Stanford, where I chose to go, was giving full funding for four years to all entering history graduate students at that time (thanks to generous funding from the Ford Foundation, which was-unsuccessfully, it turns out- trying to speed completion of Ph.D.s),so I paid nothing for graduate education, nor did I have to go into debt. The first year of graduate school was quite a shock, and if I had been spending thousands of dollars of my own money. I’m not sure I would have stayed in school. But in the end,I I was very glad the financial support enticed me to stay, helping me through a rough transition. While Stanford then gave its graduate students no instruction in teaching ( a situation now changed), I had the good fortune to experience excellent mentoring while I was there,I and unlike John Komlos and John Goldsrninth,I l learned a great deal during graduate school about how the academy works. My advisor beginning his first job as a professor in the same year I began graduate school and I learned much from him about the demands, pleasures,I and precariousness of academic life. Another professor I worked closely with was denied tenure while I was in my third year; I contributed a letter to her successful appeal and learned a good deal about academic values and processes along the way. I was at Stanford in the early years of the woman movement (1969-74), and my involvement in the History Graduate Students Women’s Caucus was also a crucial learning experience. The department at Stanford had only one female professor at the time, a Harvard Ph.D, who, because of nepotism rules (her husband had a position in another department), was limited to a non-tenure-track adjunct appointment. When this woman resigned, ?the Women’ Caucus organized an effort to persuade the department to hire a women for e tenure-track appointment. We talked, we wrote letters, and we succeeded. Another student and I were members of the search committee that resulted. I think I learned more about how the academy works, and how one can work to change it, in that one years than in many of the rest. Also, within this early cohort of women in the academy, there was s strong sense of solidarity, amongst both graduate students and faculty, within and across institutions. ?We knew we needed to figure out all we could about academic institutions. We knew we needed to figure out all we could about academic institutions and procedures in order to make it as newcomers, and we helped each other out as best we could. Often without access to the “old boy” networks, we founded “new girl” networks, and these have been a crucial source of support, and help to me over the year.

Most people, apart from those familiar with modern history, are unaware that as early as the turn of the century (after the Sino-Russian War), Britain entered into alliance with Japan. The special relationship lasted until the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor Incident in 1941. Meanwhile, however, the British people remained firm in siding with China. It was in the year when the July 7 Incident (1) broke out that I first became aware of the said alliance between Britain and Japan. In those days, there were foreign settlements in Shanghai. And The Dagon Bao (2) had its office successively located in the foreign-controlled districts of Tianjin, Shanghai and Hong Kong. In 1936, one year before the July 7 Incident, because I had one of Chen Baichen’s (3) plays published, in which there appeared several times the expression “X foreigner” (the cross X had been added by the editor), I was summoned three times to court by the Shanghai Municipal Council under British and Japanese control. Finally, thanks to the cross put into the manuscript, I was exempted from imprisonment.From 1938 to 1939, when I was in charge of editing the Art and Literature Supplement of The Dagong Bao, I often got into disputes with British censors (or rather with my masters) over manuscripts. When a British censor put in a red cross at will, all I could do was withdraw the entire manuscript. Sometimes, being hard pressed to find a replacement for it, I had to leave a blank on the page to show that something had been suppressed by censorship. Take a look at The Dagong Bao published in Hong Kong in those days, and you’ll find lots of blanks. Once the British censor even had half a page killed.Why? Because China and Japan were at war, and Britain and Japan were allies. The Hong Kong colonial authorities prohibited any protest staged in a region under their jurisdiction against the atrocities of the Japanese troops in China. Their word was law. There was no reasoning with them!In the autumn of 1939, I went to England to teach at the invitation of the College of Oriental Studies of the University of London. I sailed on a French steamer. When the ship arrived at Saigon, it was requisitioned and all passengers were to look for hotels for themselves except the several scores of Chinese who were escorted to concentration camps. Luckily, I was instead put under house arrest after I asked somebody to pass on my visiting card to the local Chinese consul general, who happened to be a former schoolmate of mine at Yenching University, Beijing.After going through a lot of trouble, I finally arrived at the port of Folkestone, England, in October. But, while going through entry formalities, the entry certificate issued me by the British officials turned out to be one for an “enemy national residing abroad”. When I asked the official in charge for the reason why, the answer he gave was very simple, “China and Japan are at war while Britain and Japan are allies. So, that’s that!”I remained a scapegoat until 1941 when I became a “great ally” overnight at the outbreak of the Pearl Harbor Incident. The alliance between Britain and Japan then vanished into the air with the flames of war raging over the Pacific.As to Hong Kong, I of course cherish many beautiful memories. I had my love affair on that island, I played on the fine sands of its beaches, and I many times climbed up its mountains to watch the night scenes. From 1986 to 1987, in particular, I spent a period of unforgettable days as a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, which had the most picturesque campus in the world. All that accounted for my redoubled joy over the return of Hong Kong to our motherland.

Notes:(1)The July 7 Incident (also known as the Lugouqiao Incident) of 1937 was an incident staged at Lugouqiao, being on July 7, 1937, by the Japanese imperialists, which marked the beginning of an all-out war of aggression against China by Japan.(2) The Dagong Bao (formerly known as L’impartial ), a Chinese newspaper first published on June 17, 1902 in Tianjin, later in Beijing on October 1, 1956 and now in Hong Kong known as The Tak Kung Pao.(3) Chen Baichen (1908~1994), born in Huaiyin, Jiangsu Province, was a well-known playwright and novelist. In the 1960s, he was vice editor-in-chief of the magazine People’s Literature.